Boosting The Bottom Line

Catering to busy families by offering such services as dry cleaning deliveries, take-home dinners and on-site extracurricular activities such as dance classes and karate, has become a way for an ever-growing number of daycare centres to boost their bottom line.

Little Leprechaun Academy in Mason and West Chester, Cincinnati has hired a professional chef to cook up dinner delicacies that families can order and have ready to take home with them when they pick up their child. Kids R Kids Quality Learning Centers, located in 13 states and Puerto Rico, offers late-night hours, dance and foreign language classes, and professional photography sessions.

Some centres have even incorporated daycare video viewing systems, like the ones provided by Watchkids.com, so that parents can watch their child's music lessons and dance recitals while they work. Still others are bringing in hairstylist on a monthly basis, offering an automatic payment services through companies like ReliaFund Inc.so parents don't have to write cheques, or offering to drive kids to their outside activities so parents don't have to.

Adding A Profit

If you are looking for ways to add-on profit to your business this year,

* Talk to your parents. Find out what services they would be interested having you provide, like a dry-cleaning drop-off, extended hours, an early morning Starbucks or Timmy's coffee service, etc.

* Check with instructors of various children's activities and see what they'd charge to bring their program to your centre. Know a hairstylist who could use some extra cash? Set up a haircutting day for parents and the kids.

* Walk around your business to see what other business are are out there and think of how you can combine forces to make life easier on parents and to enhance both your profits. Better still, it may enhance your enrollment figures or add new names to your waiting list. You can't beat that.